A couple weeks ago, while I was working out at the gym, I really messed up my shoulder. It was painful enough that I missed a day and a half at work. I've gone to a few chiropractor appointments and am taking physio to take care of it as much as I can. I finally talked with my doctor yesterday and he identified it as my deltoid muscle. I think. To be honest, I can barely remember, even though I've been to all these specialists. I still haven't memorized my muscle groups enough to talk about them.

A couple years ago, I expressed to my sister-in-law that I don't get sick very often. I think we were talking about sick days. She told me that my brother also was like that, but as he's gotten older he's gotten sick more often. And I thought, Hmm... 9 years' difference... I got time.

But apparently I don't. I've most certainly gotten sick more often this year. Enough that I empathized far too much with the following stand-up routine from CBC radio:

It's funny, though, just how much my stupid shoulder messed with my ability to do basic things:

I couldn't hold a guitar and had to sit down for my weekend gigs at the restaurant.

I couldn't run because it shook around too much.

I couldn't mark papers because when I'd look down at desk, it would hurt.

I couldn't plan or mark at school effectively because I kept on getting distracted by the pain.

I couldn't sleep more than a couple hours a night because there was no comfortable position to lay down in and the pain would wake me up.

It's a minor injury and it's getting better every day, but it affected my entire lifestyle. Just a stupid shoulder-machine-workout injury. As a non-athlete, this stupid, little injury affected me quite a bit. I guess we all need wake-up calls about over-pushing ourselves now and then.

If anything, it's a reminder that I'm getting old and need to take care of myself. This was another strange thing about it: I don't have a partner/sounding board to tell me to get to treatment when I should. Instead, I waited until things were bad enough that I couldn't sleep at all, bad enough that I couldn't work. It's strange to need to take care of myself completely this way. I am going to need to learn how to be more comfortable with my own body, in my own skin, if I'm going to get by successfully as a bachelor.

Fortunately, last night I did my first run since the injury. It felt good, even if I ran really, really slowly. But it's good to get my body working again.